Nicole Archer holds an MA in Cultural History from Goldsmiths College, London, and a PhD in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz. She is Assistant Professor and BA Chair in History and Theory of Contemporary Art at San Francisco Art Institute. She researches contemporary art and material culture, with an emphasis in modern textile and garment histories. Further interests include critical and psychoanalytic theory, corporeal feminism, and performance studies. Currently, Nicole is writing a manuscript entitled A Looming Possibility: Towards a Theory of the Textile, which considers how critical understandings of textiles can extend poststructuralist theories of the text. Her research also examines the ways that the textile works to produce and maintain the limits of legitimate versus illegitimate forms of state violence. Nicole’s teaching explores the relations of politics and aesthetics through examinations of style, embodiment, and desire. Her recent publications include “Security Blankets: Uniforms, Hoods, and The Textures of Terror,” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 24.2 (Winter 2014), and “Hand In Glove: Allison Smith’s Set Dressing and the Erotics of Historical Inconsistency,” in Allison Smith: Set Dressing, exhibition catalog, 16 October 2014 – 31 January 2015, Arts Club Chicago.